Based in Washington, DC FAO North America is
participating in the upcoming 1st Annual Food Tank Summit which will be
held at the George Washington University on January 21st. You can sign
up to watch the live stream
and check out the participants such as the National Young Farmers
Coalition,Harvard Law School and the GWU Institute for Sustainability on
the Food Tank website.

Q How did you come to develop an interest in agriculture and social justice?

The
organization I work for, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),
is a specialized agency of the United Nations with headquarters in Rome,
Italy, and 5 Regional Offices which are in Africa, the Near East, Asia,
Latin America, and Europe. FAO also has more than 80 country offices in
those regions, where we advise governments directly and conduct project
operations. The FAO is a key player in the global community’s fight to
end hunger and poverty and I’ve been privileged to work for FAO for over
25 years in several roles, the latest as director of the FAO’s North
America office in Washington, DC.

Q What was the impetus for the creation of FAO and specifically, the priority of Investment in Agriculture?

The
founders of FAO over 60 years ago had the foresight to understand the
central role of agriculture for human development and the duty of the
international community to tackle the problem of hunger and
malnutrition. They realized the need for an international organization
with equal representation by all nations in the world which could
coordinate agricultural policies and global interventions and give a
voice to millions of people living in poor countries and who are
unheard. FAO has been able to adapt to the demands of a constantly
changing world and help countries respond to new challenges that have
emerged: climate change, degraded land and water resources, wide-scale
animal epidemics, food crises and natural disasters, and in recent years
soaring food prices and market instability.

As
to the priority of investment in agriculture, it’s been demonstrated
over the last two decades that investment in agriculture is one of the
most effective ways to reduce hunger and poverty, especially in rural
areas.

Many countries that have consistently invested in agriculture are
on track to achieve the UN’s first Millennium Development Goal which is
to reduce by half the proportion of hungry people in the world. FAO’s
recently published State of Food and Agriculture (2012)* (2014 publication is at the link below) provided
comprehensive data on the relative sizes of investment and expenditure
flows by farmers, governments, donors and private foreign investors in
low- and middle-income countries.

What emerged is that in these 76 low-
and middle-income countries, farmers themselves are by far the largest
investors in agriculture, but face all kinds of risks because of poor
access to resources, lack of infrastructure, political instability and
lots of other challenges.

Recognizing that investing in agriculture
raises productivity and incomes and reduces hunger, FAO has drawn up
guidelines for countries to improve their governance of land and
resource rights, and principles for responsible investment as a basis
for determining long-term benefits and choosing the best investment
options.

Q Is it possible to end hunger and/or poverty?

Measuring
the different dimensions of food security is very complex; one
standalone indicator that most people are familiar with is the number of
people in the world suffering from chronic hunger, which is defined as
suffering for at least one year without enough food for an active and
healthy life. While this number has dropped from 1 billion people in
1990 to 842 million as most recently reported in 2012, the rate of
progress is too slow to reach the international goals for hunger
reduction set by the United Nations (part of the UN’s Millennium
Development Goals), often because of high rates of population growth in
many hunger-affected countries. Still, it shows that real progress can
be achieved when countries and communities take action to address the
various dimensions of food security which are: food availability,
economic and physical access to food, food utilization and stability
(vulnerability and shocks) over time.

Some
countries, notably Brazil and others just a few years ago, set much
more demanding targets of eradicating hunger, and in 2012 the UN took up
that theme with its own “Zero Hunger Challenge” with the goal of
eliminating hunger in our lifetimes. The global community is putting
much more effort into addressing the burdens of malnutrition: hunger,
under-nutrition, micro nutrient deficiencies, and overweight and obesity.

Q Are these conditions reflections of the worst parts of human nature?

Most
people are unaware that the quantity of food produced on a global
basis is more than enough for everyone, and yet chronic hunger persists
on such a scale whereby one person in eight around the world cannot get
enough food to live an active and healthy life.

There are severe and
lasting consequences to this problem because hunger is accompanied by
under-nutrition: one in four children in the world under five years of
age is stunted; this means 165 million children are so malnourished they
will never reach their full physical and cognitive potential; about two
billion people lack the nutrition they need to grow and develop into
healthy human beings.

Q Is
the role of government to (1) recognize the value in preventing poverty
and hunger, (2) recognize that this requires constant effort and (3) be
responsible for creating and enforcing legislation that establishes a
standard quality of life for all?

Well,
returning to the theme of investment in agriculture, and that farmers
must be central to any investment strategy, a good investment climate
depends on markets and governments. Markets generate price incentives
that signal to farmers and other private businesses when and where
opportunities exist for making profitable investments.

Governments are
responsible for creating the legal, policy and institutional environment
that enables private investors, both smallholder farmers and larger
enterprises, to respond to market opportunities in socially responsible
ways. Without this enabling environment and market incentives, farmers
will not invest enough in agriculture or achieve socially optimal
results.

Q In
a world where all governments were responsible (according to the
standards set by international social justice organizations), would non
profit organizations and non governmental organizations solely exist to
conduct scholarly research and advise political representatives during
the process of creating legislation?

A
world facing a major challenge such as eradicating hunger needs all
possible resources and entities involved in food security to be
committed to action: no single entity or sector can achieve such a goal
alone. Over the last several years the UN system, built on a traditional
constituency of member nations, has become much more inclusive in its
formulation of policy and thematic challenges to be addressed by the
world community.

The FAO, among others, has greatly expanded its
dialogue beyond governments in order to get full involvement of civil
society organizations and NGOs in the analysis of issues, exchange of
concrete on-the-ground experience in all areas affecting food security.
The challenges of hunger are vast and multi-dimensional; no government
can confront these issues alone. Partnerships with CSO, NGO, academia
and the private sector is the only way to achieve progress and lasting
results.

Q From the perspective of the young person living in poverty in a rural area
what kinds of current programs, initiatives and opportunities exist to
improve their life in the immediate future as well as over the long
term?

On
a global scale, many factors justify a strong focus on better enabling
smallholder farmers to invest in agriculture, starting with their sheer
numbers and economic importance and relative productivity. About 85
percent of 525 million farms worldwide are operated by smallholders on
plots measuring less than 2 hectares. Sampling in developing countries
showed that smallholder farms generate 60 to 70 percent of total rural
income through farm and non-farm activity; they have high potential to
be engines of growth and poverty reduction.

Compared to large-scale
farmers, smallholders can have significant advantages in terms of land
productivity. At the same time smallholders face disadvantages such as
access to land, markets, inputs, credit insurance and technology and
sometimes government polices work against them. Many smallholders are
women, for whom these constraints are, almost everywhere, even more
severe. Closing the gender gap and ensuring equal access by women to
resources and assets is needed to accelerate agricultural and rural
development and reduce poverty.

Q Are
under served communities, both rural and urban, in the United States
and other developed counties, included in the conversations and
investment priorities of FAO and other partner organizations? If not,
what steps are necessary to move this outcome?

While
developed nations are the main financial sources for the FAO and other
humanitarian and development organizations, the governance, the
definition of objectives and priority setting is decided and agreed
together as a community of member nations, with most of the work
directed to support developing countries in the challenges of food
security.

The developed nations also provide vast technical expertise,
goods and services which are deployed in developing countries under FAO
programs and projects. The experience of developed nations in addressing
their own challenges of poverty, hunger and rural development, or
confronting animal, crop and plant diseases, is also a factor in
determining priorities and action plans.